Those That Run in Circles
by mem0.RiZe
Summary: Because if fixing the past were easy it would have been done already. Time travel. Kakashi centric.
1. Chapter 1

AN: Dipping my feet back into fanfiction after having been gone for a long time. Looking at the stories on my old account makes me cringe, so I hope this won't become something I look back on in horror. Please let me know what you think, and point out any grammar errors. It's just a plot bunny that I had to get down, and I didn't do much editing (or any really).

I have the whole story vaguely planned out, so updates should be pretty frequent. I'm going to try for twice a week. Thanks for reading!

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"I'll ask again; who are you and what have you done to my _son? _" The blade pressed harder against his throat, nicking the skin with a deceptive gentleness.

"If you would just let me explain–" Hatake Kakashi began again, all too aware of the metal harsh against his skin as his instincts screamed in protest of his compromising position.

In response he received an angry growl; a rough hand grabbed at his hair and forced his head backwards. He swallowed a protest, watching the knife against his bobbing throat with half-lidded eyes. _Calmness is key_, he thought, even as his entire body thrummed with tension.

"Enough," A voice cut through Kakashi's frantic calculations of pressure, speed, hesitation, and survival rates.

Ever so slowly, cautious of eliciting a knee-jerk reaction born from years of paranoia–and one wrong move and the knife would slide across his neck before either man could think, but what if he went with the flow, taking some damage but leaving him with enough time to dispatch the enemy before _no damnit, focus–_Kakashi slowly turned his focus towards the speaker, shifting position slightly as he did so.

"You must understand that your story is very hard to believe," the Sandaime Hokage said, watching Kakashi with eyes hard and calculating. "And a bit too convenient, don't you agree?"

It was not a question, not really, in so much as that it required no answer. _He doesn't believe me_, Kakashi thought, and this was one variable for which he had not accounted.

He had thought long and hard before revealing himself, going over every possible scenario–Madara realized, he arrived too late, there was no other way–but it seemed he had missed one very obvious possibility.

Hatake Sakumo had been a genius in his time, revered with the likes of the Legendary Sannin and feared like a plague. He was a master of ninjutsu, too smart to be caught up in an enemy's genjutsu, and his skill with a tanto was spoken of only in whispers. So it would have been fool to try to deceive him in his own house, and Kakashi was no fool.

But it appeared he was, because from what he could remember of his short childhood before his father died—_and he collapsed under the heavy weight of whispers, cruel eyes, and mocking lips to which Kakashi had added his own_—his father had never paid any particular attention to him. There had been times, of course, when Kakashi came home from training broken, bruised, and bleeding all over, and his father had cleaned his wounds, kissed his bruises, and tucked him in to bed with a murmured "Good job," or "I'm proud of you." Yet there had also been times when Kakashi had pushed himself to the limit, reaching and reaching and reaching for a white chakra to match his hair and his _blood, _only to collapse on a field far from home, and his father would not notice when he did not come home for days.

So it was not with a completely unfounded certainty that Kakashi had really believed that his father simply _would not notice _that a stranger, a dying old man with a red eye and scars that cut too deep to be seen, had replaced his five-year-old son.

But he had seen the differences in his son, and dragged him off to the Hokage proclaiming the boy a spy in disguise. Kakashi was finding explaining his situation more difficult than he could have hoped–though to be honest, not any more difficult than he could have expected.

"Of course you might find my words hard to swallow," Kakashi said. "And for good reason, too. But if you would let me finish my story, I believe I could make myself more clear, and we could–"

"Time travel is impossible," Hatake Sakumo interrupted, not letting up his pressure against Kakashi's exposed throat–_you are weak, weak, vulnerable I could kill you right now so tell the truth tell the truth tell the truth_, Sakumo's every movement demanded, and Kakashi wanted to shout back that _i am goddammit if you would just listen-!_

"What you mean by that," Kakashi corrected, "Is that right now, time travel is impossible. In the future, it won't be."

"Yes, and in this future, you were the only lucky one to have a chance to use this power?" the Sandaime said.

"Well, others could have too, and I just haven't had a chance to meet up with them yet," Kakashi said. "But after quite a bit of consideration I've come to believe that by virtue of my appearance here, the future as I know it has ceased to exist, just as the Kakashi whose body I inhabit no longer exists."

This was clearly the wrong thing to say, Kakashi realized, as a burst of killing intent shot through the room before quickly being suppressed. Perhaps he should have been gentler in pressing the point that Sakumo's son was really dead, and all that remained was a too-old man in a child's body. The hand on the knife was shaking, he noted, as the blade dug deeper into his skin and he felt the telltale prick of blood, Sakumo's knuckles pale white with tension.

The Sandaime ignored Sakumo's momentary loss of composure as Sakumo's shaking decreased to a deadly thrum of tension, killing intent hidden beneath a veneer of calm. Eyes still locked with Kakashi's—and did it not feel wrongwrongwrong to look at this man with two eyes after all this time? —the Saindaime spoke.

"And a Rin'negan user, after destroying Konoha, chose to send you beck in time in order to stop him, after he had a change of heart and regretted the destruction he had wrought. Also, you were dead at the time. Because he had killed you. And you only assume this because of the Rin'negan eyes you saw before you came back to life, awaking in the body you currently inhabit. Am I understanding correctly?"

Kakashi flinched. It was an uncomfortable sensation to actually be telling the truth _for once _and to be completely dismissed as a fool speaking nonsense.

"A spy would have a better cover story?" He tried, weakly.

"A spy would also try to double buff us in exactly that manner."

"I can prove I am a Hatake," Kakashi said, reaching for the white chakra just outside of his grasp in a movement as natural to him as breathing.

"Kakashi cannot summon his white chakra yet," Sakumo said, his own chakra levels rising in warning as he noticed Kakashi's chakra shift.

"At firve, I couldn't," Kakashi said, leaving the white chakra crackling beneath his finger tips, stopping it just before release, worried that suddenly unleashing it would startle Sakumo's hand and kill him before he had a chance to move.

"_You _are not—" Sakumo began angrily.

"Do it slowly," the Sandaime said. "No sudden movements."

Kakashi obeyed, gently letting the chakra flow out of his control, bathing his skin in an eerie shine , before reaching out for his father's chakra, only to find it already responding, wrapping around him with a sense of familiarity that could not be faked. _Hatakehatakehatake _his blood sang, and the chakra responded. _Kakashi. _

There was a noticeable release of tension, Sakumo's grip on his blade loosening ever so slightly as he slowly brought it away from kakash's bared skin. However, Kakashi was only dimly aware of his movements, eyes still locked on the Sandaime's cold visage.

"Unlocking the white chakra at such a young age is certainly an accomplishment," the Sandaime said. "But I have no time for games, Kakashi."

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The doctors told him he was mad.

It was perfectly understandable, in a tragic sort of way. There was a reason people could not use _that_ chakra as children. It was powerful, corrosive, dangerous, and he was not the first young genius to be driven mad and delusional by its allure and illusions.

Sometimes, Kakashi could almost believe them.

But then Sakumo stopped visiting altogether, and while his visits had been rare at best—the man was a shinobii, and a good one at that, he had missions to complete, and a country to serve—but Kakashi knew this was different. Perhaps it was the change from "Hatake-sama," from the younger medics who could not separate the boy from his father, or "Hatake-kun" to a universal "Hatake." Perhaps it was the glares that the greener medics, ones who had not yet learned to put their duty before their feelings, gave him when they delivered his food: familiar glares (_"The son of the White Fang…" "Coward." "He started this war." "Just like his father.")_. Or maybe it was the sudden increase in shinobi in the hospital, bleeding their guts out with curses of Iwa on their lips. But he knew.

He knew with an aching certainty that Hatake Sakumo was dead—and he was screaming on the tatami mat and oh god oh god oh god why was there so much _blood_—and Konoha was at war.

And he could have fucking told you, Sandaime-_sama. _

Because Kakashi was not insane, damnit, but there was nothing he could really do. So he stared at the white, white walls, and wondered idly if he was not still dying, trapped between the rocks as Pein stood above him, gloating. He wished it would go faster; he much preferred the illusion of talking to his father besides the campfire. This one hurt, tearing open wounds that should have scabbed long ago. He should not have let himself hope that it could be different.

There were fifty-six cracks in the ceiling, and 1,264 tiles he could see from the position in which he lay. 1,265 if he counted the tile drifting just outside of his vision, blurry in his peripherals.

He rolled onto his side, gazing at the bleached wall for a long moment before letting out a sigh and beginning to count. He counted 1,542 tiles from the new position (but he knew that already).

Perhaps if the war got worse they would have no choice but send him to the battlefield. He would go to the frontlines, surrounded by career genin who would have retired long ago in times of peace for civilians lives, but would instead by sacrificed by the dozen as cannon fodder to hold the trenches and just _keep them back._ If he snapped and went mad—madd_er, _that is—there was just as much of a chance that he would kill an enemy as an ally, and the loss of a man on the frontlines would not be particularly devastating for Konoha either way.

As it was, he was never allowed to leave the room; it was too dangerous to have a madman running free, despite his age he was deadly, white chakra at his fingers ready to rip and tear and kill at his beck and call. Even without it he was a threat to civilians; he had only been a couple of months from the age at which he was promoted to chuunin. In peacetime, perhaps a shinobi could have been spared to watch him, to make sure he did not snap and kill and kill and kill, or even to give him another psych evaluation, though Kakashi would have told them exactly what they wanted if they would just give him one (_he had always been good at faking sanity_). Those men were needed for the war, and could not be spared to tend to the desires of a boy that frankly did not matter.

At least he was no longer confined to the bed; when he had first been brought the hospital he had fought, twisting and turning and ripping free of the grip of the unlucky chuunin that his father had assigned to escort him—and that had hurt a little, that his father had not even stayed long enough to see him safe under the medics' care. He had run, dodging the grasping hands of the two jounin on desk duty, and flying across the rooftops towards—he did not know. He just knew that he was not crazy, and that he had to stop this, had to save everyone; he had to…had to…had to do _something. _

But his body had given out on him, because he was five, small, and tiring too fast. And he had been escorted to the hospital by a pair of jounin that time, hands bound behind his back and legs tied together. They had chained him to the bed, not quite at war but not enough at peace to spare a man to watch him, and there he had lie, eating whatever the medics had scooped into his mouth and unable to move for weeks before he had managed to convince them that he would be a _good boy, he promised _and he would _stay right here, ok? _

It had taken every ounce of cute, pouty lips, and large, teary eyes that he had until he had convinced him, and once he was free of his restrictions, though the desire to break his word and attempt an escape was strong, he had not done so. Any freedom he gained in that manner would only be temporary: he only had the body and stamina of a gennin, and every day he had spent unmoving had slowly robbed him of even that.

So Kakashi counted tiles, did pushups—and he knew that he was out of shape, but there was nowhere to run, he could not channel chakra, and so what more could he do?—and waited.

Sometimes he wondered if his sensei would come to visit him, because what he would _do _for another glance at Namikaze Minato's face. But then he would remember that Minato would not meet Kakashi for years, and that now the man never would.

Kakashi waited.

He waited for Rin, who would never believe him behind, not like he had left her (but she was deaddeaddead and he should visit the memorial stone). He waited for Obito, and turned to the mirror, pressing a hand against the eye that should not exist.

"Good morning, Obito," he had said each morning, when he opened his eyes to the spinning red that was all that had remained of his teammate.

"Good morning, Kakashi," he said instead, a parody of the ritual that made him feel vaguely sick and unbearably dirty.

He waited for Cat, Crow, Owl, and Bear. He waited for "Inu-taichou" coming from the lips of a stranger in a familiar mask (_it was Monday and Cat was gone, and then it was Wednesday and there was a new Cat_).

He waited for Gai in all of his insufferable glory, for Naruto and his unbearable enthusiasm and Sakura in all her uncontrollable anger (_and he knew it was concern, so he smiled as she smacked his harder into the bed, ignoring the protest of his aching body—"Are you trying to kill yourself, idiot?"_). She was a much better doctor than any of the fools here, he thought with a tinge of pride, she had grown up well.

No one came; no one could come.

Kakashi waited.

The doctors brought him books when they could, a random assortment of trash that no one else had any need for. He read about flower sorting and hairstyles, the history of Konoha, the legend of Momotaro, and wished he had his own familiar orange books at his side.

He asked, once, if Jiraiya-sama had ever written any books, and the look the medic had given him was answer enough. He would ask again in a year or three, but he knew that he would have to wait for something more like a decade.

He was learning to be good at waiting.

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A month passed, or maybe it was a year, and Kakashi turned to reading medical dictionaries. He was rather surprised to find that it was interesting; everything he had previously known about medicine, shinobi and otherwise, had been from the simplest jutsu he had copied with his sharingan, and he could still feel in the back of his memory, and whatever his assorted teammates had pounded into his head over the years. Though he had no practical way to apply any of his new knowledge, it was something to keep him from the pressing boredom, and so Kakashi made it his mission to learn everything he possibly could.

He learned to knit from a medic with blue hair and sad eyes named Koide Akiko, who had made a point to visit him and talk to him whenever she had a break from duty. She would talk to him about the weather, the price of food, her pet dog, and anything else that came to mind, but never the war. She was kind, not a traitor, and so he did not push her for information, just absorbed her empty words with the same kind of enthusiastic desperation with which Naruto ate ramen. He was lonely.

She stopped coming quite suddenly, and Kakashi assumed she was transferred or had died—and was not quite sure which he preferred.

With a needle and stock of yarn which he knew she was not supposed to have left in his room—who knew what a crazy patient could get up to with something so sharp and dangerous—Kakashi slowly and fumblingly began to knit.

His first attempt at a sweater was impressive only in just how terrible it really was, looking more like the cape that Pakkun used to wear than anything a human could ever fit into. He undid the yarn and tried again and again and again, until the sweater was perfect, fuzzy, warm, and fit him just right. Then he undid it and learned how to make gloves.

Time passed, in the way it was wont to do, and Kakashi had a new roommate.

Uchiha Kouji was a tall boy with shaggy dark hair, lean in the way of a child who had known the starvation of life in the trenches; with holes where his dark-eyes—_and they spin to redredred are you afraid, Kakashi? You should be—_should have been.

Kouji had not realized he had a companion until Kakashi had greeted the next morning, and the boy had spun towards him, swinging wildly at the air in front of his face.

"Who are you?" _Where _are you, was the question, and Kakashi could hear the desperation in his tone.

"Hatake Kakashi, I live here," he said, and he saw the recognition pass across the boy's face at his last name.

He did not say anything, though, and for that at least, Kakashi supposed he should be grateful.

"Uchiha Kouji," the boy responded. "They sent me here, too. Why are we together? Isn't this place for the—" a pause. "Crazy ones? Like, the dangerous ones?"

_"Dangerous to his health and others, Sakumo. He needs to be dealt with," Sandaime had said and Kakashi had started in abject horror because this was not how things were supposed to go. _

"I guess neither of us were quite dangerous enough," Kakashi said, purposefully stepping hard against the floor so Kouji could track his movements.

"…Aa," Kouji replied, voice distant, even as his head snapped back and forth to follow the sound of Kakashi's movements. "I'm not crazy, though, not really. They just don't want me any more, not like _this!_" He gestured at gaping cavities in his face, before sinking back down onto his bed.

"I'm not the only one who can't stop remembering, sometimes, but they tolerate everyone else. But what good am I like _this?_"

Kakashi did not answer. There was no point in lies.

"I'm not crazy either," he said, instead, and then continued to answer the unasked question. "They don't want another White Fang."

It was not quite the truth, but it was close enough, and he was never going to tell the _real _story again. He was not crazy. Really. He was not stupid either.

"I see."

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"How long have you been here, then?"

"What's the date?"

"Spring of Konoha's ninetieth year."

"…Two years."

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"How's the war, now?"

"People are dying."

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"How old are you?"

"Fifteen."

"I'm seven."

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"What does the room look like?"

"White."

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"What do you look like?"

"I have gray hair."

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"What do I look like?"

"An Uchiha."

There was a silence. That was cruel.

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Time passed in several cruel and uncomfortable moments, and they played shouji and talked about nothings that were everything. Kakashi practiced his calligraphy, carving his kanji into the walls with the tip of his knitting needle, read aloud to Kouji from whatever new books he was given, and they waited.

No one came. They waited.

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"You _are _crazy, you know. Naruto, Sasuke, they don't exist. The Yellow Flash is alive, and so is Sandaime-sama. So are the Uchiha."

"You carved your eyes from your head."

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"You don't understand, you couldn't understand. The sharingan—you never forget. You see things and you never forget. You can remember every detail, every expression, every second, millisecond, heartbeat. It never goes away. I just wanted it to goaway!"

"Is it gone now?"

The no went unspoken, and Kakashi already knew the answer. He had once had a sharingan of his own, after all.

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And then someone did come.

He slipped into the room with a quiet grace, small, lithe, no older than ten, and unnervingly familiar.

"Kouji-san?" He said, and Kakashi recognized him with a start. "It's me, Shisui."

Kouji snapped to attention, body tight with an emotion that Kakashi could not quite place.

"Kouji-san?" Uchiha Shisui asked, voice soft and low, as though careful of frightening off a wild animal.

"…Why are you here?"

Kakashi thought that if he were ever to get a visitor, he would be far more grateful for it. He said nothing, watching the cousins through a pair of half-lidded eyes.

"The war is over," Shisui said, as though that would explain it all, but when Kouji made no sign of understanding, he continued. "Daishiro-sama is dead. Fugaku-sama is the new head of the clan. Now that the war's over, he wishes all of the family to come back home."

Kakashi knew what Fugaku had been trying to say, even if the other two boys did not (though he doubted that, they were clever children): during the war every able-bodied Uchiha had been needed, and keeping the clan alive had to be priority, without being able to spare worry about apparent strength within the village itself. With the oncoming peace, appearances were everything. The village needed to appear strong to the other nations, even as it underwent a political civil war for power on the inside. The Uchiha would not lose. Therefore, they could not afford to look weak, and a mad boy in the psych ward would be a shame on the clan, an obvious weakness to exploit.

Kouji would go home, Kakashi thought. He would go home and be watched day and night by an elderly Uchiha who had been just both lucky and unlucky enough to survive the war, the Uchiha would call it freedom, and no one would ever mention him again.

"How long has it been?" Kouji asked with a quiet sort of desperation, and Kakashi wondered if he was thinking of sisters that he had left behind. Saya and Yukie, he said, a pair of twins two years younger than him and not quite talented enough to be forced into the fighting. He had once had four sisters. He never mentioned the other two.

"The war is over now," Shisui repeated.

"How long has it been?"

"Five years."

Kouji went home.

Kakashi stayed and waited to die.

–But just before Shisui could close that door behind him and take with him all of the temptation of _i need answers please just let me know let me know let me know i need to know, _Kakashi caught his sleeve to stop him.

"Do you know a cousin named Uchiha Obito?"

"He died six months ago on a mission." Shisui replied. It should not have felt like the world was crashing down around him all over again.

It did anyway.

**R&R. Cheers~ **


	2. Chapter 2

AN: I rushed to get this out so there's definitely an abundance of grammar/spelling mistakes; please point out any you find and I'll fix them right away. Around 8 pages in word, but a bit shorter than last chapter.

Let me know what you think-whether you hate it, love it, or don't even know why you're reading it since you don't give a shit.

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Kakashi let himself wonder.

Without Kouji to distract him it was easy to dwell on could have beens, would have beens, should have beens. Should have beens especially, because it _should not _have been like this.

Sometimes, the thought made him want to cry—but he could not remember the last time he had done something like that, could not remember how, even if he wanted to—but mostly it just made him want to scream.

Sometimes, he did. He screamed and screamed and screamed into the silence of his headboard and wondered if anyone could hear him. He doubted it, the walls were thick for a reason, afterall. Sometimes he screamed to the ceiling and the sky beyond it, he screamed to the gods and begged to know _why; _he screamed and did not stop, not when the medics rushed in to restrain him, lest he hurt himself, not when they had to knock him out to make him shut up, and not when he woke up in the whitewhitewhite room that had become his living tomb.

At least the color was appropriate, Kakashi thought. He was already dressed for his funeral.

He screamed because mad men scream, and he was not mad in the beginning _im not lying sandaime-sama please please PLEASE-! _But he was a dutiful shinobi if nothing else, and he knew how to obey his Hokage even as it tore his heart in two. Sandaim-sama said he was mad. Sandaime-sama was right; perhaps he had always been.

So Kakashi screamed into the oppressive silence, wondering why it would not go away, and dreaming of a man who had woke up in the body of a child–with memories of a rin'negan and death and mangekyou sharingan staring into his soul–and saved the entire goddamn world. He wished he were braver. How could he save the world if he could not even save himself?

He was still screaming when the visitor came, and he did not bother to stop. A blond hair of head poked into the door, and f anything he screamed louder because _sensei sensei sensei senseisensei im sorry im sorry _and he should have—could have—saved his sensei, but he had not and _oh god im so sorry please wake up why didn't you let the sandaime please i cant what am i supposed to do without you please–_

The man was speaking to someone behind him, head turned just enough that Kakashi could not see his face. Kakashi wondered why the noise did not bother him; could he not feel the screaming, screaming,_ screaming_ silence crashing down around him?

"Yondaime-sama," Kakashi heard, muffled as though from across a glass barrier.

Three things happened simultaneously: the man turned to face him, Kakashi realized he was the one who had spoken, and the air was rent by a scream.

"Hello," Namikaze Minato said, seemingly completely unaware of the screaming, screaming, crying, roaring noise that Kakashi realized sounded like a screaming village—_"Just hold it off until Yondaime-sama comes!"_—and then he had always hated himself for doing so too efficiently.

(_"Hey there, I'm going to be your new teacher now, I suppose," the man had said, smiling awkwardly as he rubbed the back of his neck. "I hope we'll get along, since it will be just the two of us for a while, right…squirt?"_

_"Hatake Kakashi."_

_"What?"_

_"My name's Hatake Kakashi."_

_"Oh, well I knew _that. _Hey, don't look at me like that! I did–! Do you doubt your sensei?"_

_"…"_

_" You brat!"_)

"…Hello," Kakashi replied, voice cracking from disuse.

(_"I know you don't want teammates, but we don't really have a choice. Besides, one's an Uchiha and the other's a medic, so you don't need to worry about their abilities, I'm sure they'll be quite strong."_

_"They'll hold us back."_

_"You don't need to fret so much, I won't let any of you get hurt."_)

When Minato had first come to office it had been to a broken village of dying children. Kakashi remembered the way Minato had looked as though it had been only yesterday, standing tall and regal in his white coat and grandiose hat. Kakashi had been struck then, quite suddenly and acutely, with just how far the gap between the two of them really was. He had bowed low and deep, scared to look up, and feeling unworthy to even be in the presence of this untouchable, godlike man.

And then the illusion had shattered in an instant as the Yondaime Hokage had laughed, grabbed Kakashi by the ear, and yanked him back to his feet.

"If I'm Hokage, does that mean I get to bully you as much as I want now, Kakashi-kun?" He had asked, pinching Kakashi's cheeks as Kakashi squirmed away, and Kakashi could not help the smile that had touched face in response.

The first thing that Minato had done was reimagine the academy; he had turned it from a place of disillusionment and blood—Kakashi his could remember vividly the day they had lined his class in front of a group of beaten and bloody Iwa prisoners surrounded on all sides by guards and told them to chose a man and then kill him—to exactly what it should have been: a school.

Children learned how to read and write, how to do math and calculate taxes; they learned history and legends, and calculated shuriken throwing angles to account for differing wind strengths, and occasionally they went to a training ground reserved specifically for academy students and got to practice with blunted kunai and shuriken that would not cut their fingers if held improperly

—And Kakashi had looked at the pathetically incapable genin hopefuls that Sandaime-sama sent him and loved them even as he failed them, because this was what peace meant.

The next task Minato had undertaken was the restructuring of the hospital system in a way based loosely off of Tsunade-sama's ideas. Kakashi remembered weeks of trailing in his sensei's shadow as the man passed from room to room of dying or unstable patients, asking them what their name was, how their day had been, and giving them empty reassurances of a better future. When he had visited every person in the hospital, he had turned to Kakashi, and, speaking to him, yet through him, had said: "This will not do."

New sectors were added, medical records became policy, Hippocratic oaths were taken, patient care was revamped completely, and ANBU gained its first dedicated medic squad.

(Half the hospital was destroyed in the Kyuubi attack just a year later, but the other changes remained; every time Kakashi faltered half-way home, collapsing in the forest on the border of Fire Country, he liked to think the medic that found him and hauled his dying ass back to headquarters was his sensei's way of saving him).

A lot of time must have passed, he thought distractedly, for his Minato-sensei to be here already. _Perhaps things are different, now_, a part of his mind whispered treacherously, but Kakashi dismissed the thought instantly. Because if things could have changed then Obito would be _alive _damnit, and he would be training with him right now, being careful to avoid catching the boy's two blazing sharingan eyes.

He supposed it must have become clear to the man at some point that Kakashi had no intention of saying anything else, because Minato began to speak again.

"I'm Namikaze Minato," he said, stepping into the room, before glancing towards the bed where Kakashi sat as though asking permission.

Kakashi nodded, and Minato came to sit besides him, smiling genially—_but there was a closed side to the smile that Kakashi had seen directed to strangers and admirers who did not really know him, but never at Kakashi, never at Kakashi. _

"I know," Kakashi said, curtly, swallowing anything else he might have wanted to say. Because what could he say? They already thought he was mad, why would he give them more proof? (He wanted to screamscreamscream _don't you recognize me sensei?_)

Would Minato believe him? He doubted it. He could give the man proof, he knew. Tell him things that he had no way of knowing, private things that Minato had shared with Kakashi as a symbol of his utmost trust—and he would be killed on the spot because tales of war of Kyuubi and Uchiha could be dismissed as a harmless child gone crazy, but stories of Minato's father and family and secret desires were too dangerous and precious to be shared. A Hokage must show no weakness.

"You've been here a long time, haven't you..." Minato trailed off.

"Hatake Kakashi."

"Right. You've been here a long time, so how would you like to go outside, Kakashi-kun?" Minato asked.

"Yes," Kakashi said immediately, affecting an air of casualness even as he knew he had answered far too quickly to play it off. "I would like to go outside."

"Excellent!" Minato grinned, clapping his hands together.

Kakashi reeled backwards in shock at the noise, loud and harsh on his ears–because it was _quiet. _He stared up at his sensei (_no, the Yondaime Hokage, _whispered that treacherous part of his brain that he could not quite control) in shock, questions forming on his lips–

The screams were gone and it was _quiet. _He could not remember the last time it had been _quiet. _Kakashi wondered if he had been the one screaming, and why it had not stopped when he had closed his mouth.

–And the questions were swallowed and locked behind bars of _don't think about that, Kakashi _that he was all too good at obeying.

He blinked slowly, slouching back into a more casual posture as he allowed his body to release its sudden tension. "Well?" he said. "Aren't you going to take me?"

Minato had been watching him with a guarded expression, face deceptively friendly and open despite the cold and calculating interior that he knew was lurking beneath. He wondered if Minato had been testing his sanity, and concluded that it did not matter seeing as after his remarkably poor reaction to even the slightest of human interaction his chances of freedom from this place were probably shot.

He just hoped he had not lost his chance to go outside. It had been too long since he had smelled the fresh air, looked up at the blue sky without a grate of heavy bars obscuring his view, reveled in the world, and just let himself _live._

It was probably his eternal failure to never realize what he had until he lost it, Kakashi reflected. He did not think he had ever appreciated the freedom of color in front of his eyes, grass under his feet, and sky above his head when he had the chance—before white rooms, white walls and 1,264 white tiles.

At his words, Minato smiled again, and let out a short bark of a laugh.

"Yeah, just follow me," he said, standing up to leave.

Kakashi followed, slowly coming to his feet to follow in Minato's wake, fighting to keep his composure as everything within him begged to just reach out and touch the man, because he had to know that Minato was _real _and alive and he just wanted Minato to ruffle his hair or touch his arm or _remember _him like he used to, _please please please sensei please wake up please you cant leave i need you. _

He closed his eyes, brushing away a pinch of dust that had been bothering them with the back of his hand, and then opened them again, face calm and bored, eyes half-lidded and not staring at Minato like it was the last time he would ever see the man, drinking in every movement with a relish because it meant that Minato was _alive. _

He wished he still had his book to hide his face behind, or, even better, his mask to conceal his expression. He would have said he felt naked without it, except it had been years since he had last worn it—he had only started wearing it after his father's disgrace, because he did not want to wake up in the morning and see that face staring back at him, and as such he had not had it when he had first come to the hospital—and he had grown accustomed to its absence. He still missed it, though.

"I've been working on setting up a new area, a kind of courtyard where everyone will be allowed to go, in order to spend some time outside. I'll take you to see it." Minato said, cheerfully starting up a conversation as he started down a staircase ahead of Kakashi, even as he eyed the boy cautiously as though worried the boy would suddenly keel over from moving too much.

Kakashi felt the urge to roll his eyes. He knew how to take care of his body, thank you very much. (The urge to scream was back because this was too familiar please stop sensei _please wake up_).

Minato continued to chatter on, oblivious to Kakashi's inner turmoil, or perhaps only pretending to be. Kakashi was supposed to be insane, so any odd behavior was probably expected. Then again, this Minato did not know Kakashi at all—and damn it hurt to admit that—so he could have just not noticed.

"I'd like to get it set up so that everyone here can go outside a couple of hours a day. There'd be a supervisor over the area, of course, but we could probably assign it to a genin team, like a kind of rotation." Minato did not seem to be speaking to Kakashi anymore, too wrapped up in his idea to pay much attention to the boy at his side.

"–That would make everyday kind of difficult, though. Perhaps just a couple of times a week…? That might work…"

Kakashi stopped paying attention to Minato's words, just letting the man's voice flow over him as he breathed in his distinctive smell with a slight smile, and continued down the staircase.

Eventually they reached the first floor, and Kakashi realized that he must have been on a much higher floor than he had previously thought—there went the half-imagined plans of smashing the window and jumping, with chakra to steady him it would not have been an issue, but the seals built into the room ensured that that was an impossibility.

Minato turned down a hallway that Kakashi did not recognize, heading deeper inside the hospital toward where Kakashi assumed the courtyard must be. He followed behind, trying to ignore the sudden assault on his senses as people milled about them, calling out to each other, exchanging greetings with the Hokage, and rushing past them with murmured apologies to reach an operating room.

In front of him Minato came to a sudden stop, and Kakashi quickly focused all of his attention on the man's words once more, trying not to wince at how _loud _everything was (because at least there was no screaming).

"How do you like it?" Minato asked, voice tinged with a hint of pride, and Kakashi turned to face the direction in which he was looking.

He knew it was a modest courtyard; he had seen it before once with Minato when it was just nearing completion and the man had dragged him there to ask the same question.

He had said that it was nice, yeah whatever, but he had a mission to be on and teammates waiting at the gates, so sorry sensei but he was going to have to take a pass on exploring it. Maybe another time.

Minato-sensei had frowned at him it that way that Kakashi hated, and always made him feel as though he had failed some sort of essential test, but reluctantly dismissed him with a "be careful" and "see you soon."

(Kakashi had come home two months later short one team and a solid three pints of his blood, but with the missing-nin's head in a bag, and that was what counted in the end, right?)

But looking at it now, Kakashi thought it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. It was lush and green, and there was a fountain in the center surrounded by a ring of benches in the shade of tall trees that Kakashi suspected Tenzo had something to do with, because trees simply did not grow that fast.

The cobbled path to the center was surrounded by grass, and how long had it been since he had smelled grass? There was a ring of flowers on the other corner, vivid blues, pinks, and reds nearly enough to give Kakashi a headache even before their cloyingly sweet scent swept over towards his overly sensitive nose.

He loved it.

"It's nice," he said.

Minato grinned, but then turned away at a signal from one of the ANBU that had been shadowing them.

"I'm glad you like it, but it looks like I'm going to have to leave you here, Kakashi-kun," he said. "But I'll leave Tora here to watch you, and you can spend as long outside as you like, ok?"

Without waiting for an answer he was turning away, the tiger-masked ANBU detaching himself from his position in the shadows to come to Kakashi's side, leading him into the courtyard as Minato hurried away.

But when he entered the courtyard for a moment all thoughts of his teacher left his mind because he had missed this so much and he was _free. _

He stayed in the garden until the sun set, leaning against the back of a tree and lazily tracing the path of the birds in the sky above him.

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Days turned to weeks and the seasons changed, but this time Kakashi was there to witness it as the flowers bloomed brighter and brighter, and then began to dim with the change to autumn, and the leaves began to fall from the trees in brilliant shades of orange and gold.

He fell into a new pattern with ease; he would wake up at the same time he always had when they came to deliver his morning plate of gruel, then he would entertain himself until lunch, and then, on his lucky days, he would be escorted by a bratty team of genin down to the courtyard where he would promptly ignore both them and people who he assumed were the other patients, until his babysitters told him that his time was up and escorted him back to his room to eat a plat of mushy vitamins disguised as food for dinner and then go to sleep.

Kakashi turned to new hobbies, having long-exhausted sources for medical knowledge that were at his current classification level. He obtained a kanji dictionary, and began to go through it, memorizing page-by-page at a surprisingly slow rate. He had forgotten just how difficult it was to memorize things without the sharingan, and it proved a fresh way of spending his time.

He had never formally been taught kanji to begin with, his father had ensured that he could read and write the basics before sending him off to the academy, but even before war had completely broken out, the academy was tense and focused and too intent on teaching children to survive—and more importantly to kill—to waste time with kanji memorization.

At some point Minato had noticed his somewhat unfortunate situation, and Kakashi had found a book of all the most common kanji lying on his bedside table. He'd looked through it and memorized the majority on his own, and years later when he had a sharingan he had skimmed in once again, committing everything to memory in a more permanent fashion.

Then there had been an infiltration mission once upon a time in another life, where he had been required to masquerade as a Kusa nobleman for a couple of months, that had required another kanji cram session.

He had received around two hours of lecture from an ANBU from the Hyuuga clan on proper decorum depending on the situation, and a book on calligraphy, one of the man's apparent passions, which he had memorized in around two minutes.

Then a book on kanji, since _what kind of calligraphy master would spend all day_ _writing the same numbers over and over again, geez taichou how do you even write your mission reports?_

That was both a little insulting and a little unfair. Why would he ever use such ridiculous words in a mission report that he was expected other people would read? Honestly.

And so in the end, it was not as though Kakashi did not know enough kanji—in fact, he knew far more than he ever thought he would find a use for—but the kanji dictionary was _large, _and if there was one thing he had it was time.

Learning to memorize things again without his sharingan was an interesting exercise anyway, and it made him rather ashamed to see how much he had begun to use the eye as a crutch, though he knew he would have been a fool not to take advantage of its powers.

And so it was with a surprising sense of calm that Kakashi accepted his fate, content with the semi-occasional visits to the garden, the peace of a calligraphy brush that he had managed to beg off of a medic in his hand, and the quiet in the room that had at some point stopped sounding like screaming—

That was a lie, actually. But whenever it got to much and he thought _one more minute of this and i will break _there would be a genin at his door, giving him a judgmental look as she certainly did not just mutter the word freak under her breath, ready to escort him to the courtyard. And the screams of monsters in the dark abated, shriveling under the bright glare of the sun.

—And Kakashi forgot to worry about things he could have, would have, _should have _done, and was content (even if he did sometimes wake shaking and sweating, unable to stand on his own, from dreams of redredred spinning eyes, blood on his hands and in his mouth, rin'negan eyes looking down on him as they lazily flicked a nail towards his throat, and then a single glaring sharingan, twisted and mutated into an unfamiliar form that he thought he should remember).

Until there was a surge of familiar chakra so potent that he could sense it through the chakra suppressing seals on the walls, and the world began to crumble in a surge of malevolent red.

**R&R. Cheers~**


	3. Chapter 3

AN: Recently I've learned that I can't write action. Especially when I'm trying to make it both chaotic and readable. Oh well, let me know what you think! It's very short because just getting this far was an incredible struggle, the next chapter should not take as long. A bit funny that the chapter I had planned out the best was the hardest to write. I'm still not completely satisfied with it, so there might be some changes to it later; I'm not sure.

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Kakashi let instinct carry him out of the rapidly collapsing hospital as chakra that he had not used in years exploded out of him in an automatic defensive mechanism.

The night smelled like blood and fire, and oh-so-familiar.

Behind him he could hear the shouts of the police force, already set to work rescuing civilians and injured shinobi from the rubble that had been the hospital. The horizon was blood red and Konoha was burning, as shinobi leapt from windows, hair still mussed from sleep.

"I've got a live one over here!" An Uchiha boy who must have been part of the police force shouted at Kakashi's side. Then, grabbing him by the sleeve, "Come on, sir, we've got to get out of here."

Kakashi ignored him, searching his surroundings for what he knew should have been right before him. It was fucking enormous, bigger than the Hokage's mountain, it should not have been hard to find.

The boy tugged on his sleeve again, then stronger, frantically.

"We have to hurry!"

The fire in the air moved. A whip of chakra (_a tail oh god_) knocked him into the air before he could think, move, or breathe. It was here. He managed to right himself, landing in a half-crouching position, tasting blood in the back of his mouth as he did.

Kakashi knew with a pressing urgency what he should do—had to do. The boy had somehow managed to cling to him throughout their impromptu flight, but Kakashi pushed him away immediately. He had to find Minato.

He stood. Then found himself collapsing to the ground, head dizzy with the scent of fire. He realized with a start that he was burning, watching in a detached sort of horror as the skin on his chest peeled and bubbling red chakra hissed through the air.

"Uchiha!" There was no response; the boy was still.

The air itself seemed to shriek out in pain; his only warning. He scrambled backwards just in time, as a tail smashed through the air where he had stood seconds before, standing at twice his height and curling around the entire sector of hospital ruins.

His hands were already moving into seals, a wall of earth rising out of the ground in front of him as a protective dome. The tail twitched as an almost afterthought; the wall collapsed. The civilian sector that lay behind the hospital exploded into flames.

The screaming returned, (_"WHERE IS HE?" "SAVE ME—" "MY DAUGHTER OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD PLEASE, NO!"_) with a desperation that he knew too well—it was there every night in his dreams because Konoha was _burning_—and Kakashi added his voice to the cacophony of last-words surrounding him.

"Sensei!"

He had to stand. He ignored the burning, twisting feeling in his chest, reaching out for the white electricity that was just beneath his skin. Then he released it; everything in one final push, and he was flying through the air, hand chirping with energy.

"Sensei!"

And it was the same eleventh-hour run he had made a lifetime ago—and every night since then in his sleep. He knew where to go, feet guiding him with a speed he had all-but forgotten.

"Minato-sensei!"

The beast roared. He fell backwards, stopped midflight by the sudden heavy pressure in the air before him, forming into compressed bullet. A ball of pure power, black, red, and somehow both so blindingly bright that his eyes stung, and so sickeningly dark that for a moment he wondered if he had gone blind.

But he had to keep moving, had to find him, stop him, save him. He knew the jutsu, he had practiced it every night afterwards—though that had not helped either Hokage in the end.

_Don't think. Run. _He ran. But the world was pressing down on him and he was slipping to the side under its heavy weight and the beast was turning and–

–The chakra bullet was in the air before him, and he knew that if the beast released he was dead.

He was suddenly hyper aware of the world around him. He swallowed, and his throat was dry with dust and smoke. There was blood partially obscuring his vision, and a numbness in his cheek. And his chest _hurt. _He looked up into those deep deep eyes and waited to die.

(_Those red eyes spun and spun and spun, and he could see the beat transposed within them, tomoes swirling wildly as tails lashed out behind him_)

A man crouched before him, facing the beast with his hands outstretched as though to shield Kakashi. Kakashi could feel the man's chakra rippling around him in preparation for a jutsu.

"Run!" He said.

A women scrambled out of the dirt from besides Kakashi, blonde hair pressed against her bloody face. She turned to run, and–

He pushed his legs to move but the pressure was surrounding him, drowning him, and his chest _hurt. _Smoke obscured Kakashi's vision, he coughed and swallowed a thick wad of phlegm.

—The pressure released.

Kakashi looked up, straining for vision with blurry eyes, to see that the mass of red had moved out of his vision. It was…gone?

_Sensei?_

But no, it had only turned. He saw a red and white fan on a blue police-force coat. The man in front of him turned, and those red eyes spun and spun and spun, and (_he could see the beast transposed within them, tomoes swirling wildly as tails lashed out behind him_).

The sharingan. The Kyuubi had the sharingan.

_Traitor!_

Kakashi screamed, and when the other voices rose to join him he could recognize them for what they were—they were Konoha crying for vengeance and he would _give _it to them. He would give it to them all.

One thousand birds sang.

The man was dead before he had a chance to move. Kakashi raised his bloody forearm to his face, relishing in the power jumping in little sparks across it. The man's blood tasted like home. Like justice.

He rose on shaky legs, and somehow it was suddenly so much easier to stand. Because he had a mission. And he would bring _revenge_.

_("I am an avenger," a boy said. And why did that fill him with such sadness?_

_There were two sharingan spinning in his eyes._)

Kakashi had a mission.

He was in the civilian sector. He knew the police force would be here, evacuating anyone who was still alive. That's what they had _said, _at least. He knew better now, murderers. Traitors.

He stabbed the next shinobi he saw through the eye and it felt so _right—_let him burn and bleed and (_those red eyes bled and bled and bled with the blood rin had bled with his hand threw her chest and the mangekyou burned in his eyes_) lose those treacherous eyes. Kakashi was almost doing him a favor.

He ripped the other eye—pale and unseeing—from the man's head, crushing it between his fingertips. The body fell limp to the ground with a quiet thud. Kakashi stepped over it, and was sure to give the man another kick in the head before he continued.

One more gone. One step closer. If he could kill them all the beast would fall and he would avenge everyone they had murdered. One more.

He turned into the ruins of a large house, following two tiny chakra systems that flicked in fear.

"We have to go back for him, I don't know where he went and I can't…I'm his big brother–we have to find him! He's with my mother somewhere, and we just have to find him! I can't let him…"

The boy could not have been older than six, with a ninjato clenched in a trembling hand that he waved for emphasis as he spoke. The one he was talking to was older, and Kakashi thought they seemed familiar. He tossed the idea away. _He did not know any traitors. _And yet–

The older boy tensed, suddenly, dark Uchiha eyes flaring and spiraling to red, as he whipped a kunai from his belt. He held the knife before him, eyes darting back and forth to sense the source of the killing intent. "Who's–"

He did not have a chance to finish the thought. Kakashi flew at them, ignoring the knifed boy completely to reach for the younger boy's throat. One at a time. One more and he would avenge them all.

As long as he did not stop, he would save them all.

Then the other boy was in front of him. A shunshin so fast Kakashi could barely follow. He would have to deal with this one first.

He moved to backhand the boy across the face, but he dodged under it, lashing out on his own. Kakashi was not fast enough to dodge, though he knew where the blow would land before it did. Knew he should have been able to move in time. _I'm out of shape, _Kakashi thought, and he might have laughed.

He fell onto his side, rolling with the blow, hands twisting into seals. He sank into the earth beneath them, heading down down down through a passage of tunnels that rapidly formed and deformed as he moved through them. He just hand to find them.

"Follow his chakra!" The younger one said.

Kakashi smirked, _bad move kid. Now I know where you are…_

He moved, secure in the knowledge that even if they could find his chakra—and how often did people forget to look down?—he would be fast enough. He just had to avoid the older one until he had enough leverage–

Kakashi grabbed the younger boy's ankle with one hand, pulling himself out of the ground behind him. He snatched the ninjato out of the boy's other hand, lifting it to the boy's neck.

"You shouldn't play around with things like this," Kakashi said, "This is high quality steel. Not suited for traitors."

"I'm not a traitor!" The boy declared, indignantly.

Kakashi flared up in response. How dare he? How _dare _he? Kakashi _knew; _Kakashi had made sure that the boy knew that he knew. And he still thought he could lie to Kakashi's face? He thought he could weasel his way out? _How dare he?_

The other boy leapt at Kakashi.

Kakashi flung the boy in his arms in front of him with all the force he could muster, then leapt backwards, channeling chakra into his legs to boost his underdeveloped muscles.

Steel met flesh. The boy had not stopped in time.

The older boy screeched to a halt, blood splattered across his face as he wrenched the knife backwards and out of its target. The younger boy collapsed in front of him, like a puppet with its strings cut.

Kakashi wished for his mask as wiped the blood splatters off of his own face.

"ITACHI!"

The boy's red eyes met Kakashi's grey, and Kakashi gave a predatory grin. _One down; one more._

"I'll—you-! I killed…I'll kill you!"

Uchiha Itachi's body flopped gracelessly to the ground. Uchiha Shisui screamed.

"I'll kill you!"

Red eyes bled, and then they were mutating into something terrifyingly familiar. Kakashi charged, metal clashed. _Monkey. _

Shisui's chakra condensed, and Kakashi immediately dropped his glance. _Dragon. _What had Gai always done? Watched the feet. _Rat. _He wished Obito were with him. _Rooster._

He met Shisui's lunge, letting the boy push him backwards as he stalled for time. They were right to have called him a genius; Shisui was fast, even this young. _Ox._

Shisui disappeared in a shunshin and Kakashi leapt upwards, where had he gone? _Snake. _A chakra burst behind him; the boy was too emotional, it was making him sloppy. _Dog. _

A fire jutsu. Kakashi fell backwards, using the cover of its brightness to finish his seals. _Tiger, Monkey._

Bird song filled the air.

Kakashi was propelled forward by the chakra's force, body screaming with tension and the desire to _killkillkill vengeancewillbemine. _Konoha screamed alongside him, voices full of a desperate kind of hope (_"please god please god i don't want to die here please save me" to a "he's here can he save us will he save us please do something" and " are we saved?"_)

…Hope? Saved?

The voices came together, and suddenly they were not screaming but rejoicing.

"He has arrived!"

"We're saved!"

"Yondaime-sama is here!"

…Yondaime-sama?

No, no no _nonononono. _Kakashi stopped dead. A shuriken embedded itself in his left arm, striking the muscle with a perfect accuracy such that he knew attempting to move it would be impossible. _Nonononono. _

Forget the Uchiha, forget Konoha; forget everything.

"Sensei!"

He could feel his body catching up to him. There was a burning in his gut, a numbing in his arm, and it _hurt. _He reached for the white chakra and let it envelop him, filling himself with lies upon lies. _You are not hurt. There is no pain. You are in perfect condition and you are going to go faster than you ever have. There is no pain. There is no pain. You can move. _He had until the chakra ran out. He just had to be fast.

He turned and ran.

_Sensei…_

**R&R. Cheers~ **


	4. Chapter 4

AN: Sorry this took so long to get up! I actually have a decent excuse for my tardiness. Basically, I was about to go to sleep one night when I realized that I completely disliked the previous idea I had for this story's direction, and had to re-plan the entire thing with a brand new direction. I don't think any of my previous chapters actively contradict the new stuff I'll be using as an explanation, so I'm not going to go back and change any of them, but if they're any little discrepancies as I get further into the story I'll go back and fix that.

Then, as I was writing this with my new direction in mind, I realized that actually the sealing went _nothing _like I thought it had, and had to re-plan out this entire scene again.

I also was reading some other fanfiction and was really inspired by their style, so I tried to imitate it to an extent. I tried a bunch of different things this chapter, so let me know if you felt it was detrimental to the story's flow, or anything like that. Or if you liked it, too.

Anyway, thanks for reading and reviewing! Sorry if I didn't get back to you on a review from last chapter. Life was kind of crazy for me and now I have no idea what I've responded to.

Anyway, enjoy! I'll try to be more timely from now on, but I'm not going to make any promises seeing as I'll probably just break them.

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He ran. Someone was burning; the acrid tang of rotting flesh stung his nostrils. One leg before the other, then the next. He ran.

Uzumaki Naruto was born on October 10, Konoha's ninety-seventh year. Kakashi would be there to see it.

He ran. His pulse beat loudly in his ears like the seconds moving on a clock—_this is the sound of your life running out. _Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

Over the smoking ruins of an apartment complex that had rivaled the Hokage tower in height, over a cracked white mask in the shape of a familiar animal (he hoped Tenzo was alright), over a bright string of a flame; he ran. The fox had moved on, careless and thoughtless in its idle destruction of all Kakashi knew, had known, and would know: all he was, had been, and could have become.

These were the things that did not matter.

Because somewhere out there—and he had to follow the fox because his sensei would follow the fox—a bright-haired blue-eyed man was plotting his own death, and Kakashi could not give it to him.

They told him that shinobi were proud to die for their country, that there was no greater death than one in the line of duty; to die for those you cared for was an honor above all.

Kakashi had believed them: closed his eyes defending a chubby Akimichi chuunin, closed his eyes thinking of Asuma, and the man was not quite a teammate but he was close enough, so dying here for his student was not so bad (_he was a shitty liar but sometimes if he did it enough he could fool himself_)—

—And woke up. Death was hell, he decided. White, white hell, and never dressed formally enough for the final funeral to just _let it all go_.

Kakashi would not let him die.

The atmosphere was heavy around him; a pressure setting itself between his shoulders that he recognized as killing intent, but was far too deep and primal to shake off. He ran. So close, that figure looming in front of him, a paw touching the ground and shattering the earth in a crater around it.

And the chakra. Oh, the chakra. He was not screaming, that was not his voice begging and pleading and _oh god oh god _as the chakra bled through the air around him and into his skin contaminating him—and he was dirty so dirty _oh god. _Or maybe it was, did it matter? (_He needed a shower; get this off him off him offoffoff_).

Was that his blood? No, no just a corpse. A stranger bathed in the red light of death. Kakashi kept going.

He dodged the paw; it was not aiming for him, so it was easy enough. Just another step forward for the fox, an unstoppable force of nature ignorant of the screaming dying men left in its wake.

(_"I am God," a red-haired man or six had said, reveling in his own capacity for destruction. _

_Kakashi had laughed then, despite being well aware of his impending defeat: he had met God and it was a monster. This was just another man, just another murderer, even if one of unmatchable strength. He had met strong men before. It was almost a comforting thought_).

_Dodge the paw. Find the Hokage monument. Sensei will be ten miles out from the tilt of Shodaime's chin. _

Find the Hokage monument. What an absurd thought: to actually have to search for the looming mountainside that towered over Konoha like an ever-present, ever-watchful guardian.

But the fox outshone it completely in its complete domination of the air, and Kakashi futilely searched the filthy sky as he ran. (Not stopping though, never stopping. Because if he stopped he was not sure that he could ever start again).

Find the Hokage monument. Find sensei.

He ran, white chakra flaring behind him in a trail.

—And there. A burst of chakra, clean, and familiar. A burst of chakra, golden and gone in a flash. The pressure in the atmosphere lifted and both chakras flickered away.

"Pakkun," he almost started, but didn't.

Find sensei_. _He ran.

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This is how Kakashi died:

A nail flew through the air.

It should have been more. It should have been more heartrending, more "here lies a hero to his very last breath." It should have been more meaningful; more of an act that saved the world and less of a futile sacrifice. It should have been more dramatic: women should have wept and bards should have told stories about his sacrifice for decades to come. It was not.

This is how Kakashi died:

A nail flew through the air while the earth kept him pinned in place, crushing him—burying him. _Was this how Obito felt?_ He tried to leap away only for his legs to betray him. (_Ohgod he cant feel his legs this is badohshit, shit!_).

A nail flew through the air and there was no time for regrets or memories or heroic last words, just a single thought. Mostly he felt cheated because it was not fair to die for one stupid miscalculation—just a little overestimation of himself and an underestimation of an enemy where it could have counted.

A nail flew through the air as whirlpool eyes of purple looked down on him with lazy indifference and that is what angered him the most. _I could kill you—should have killed you. Would have killed you. _He wanted to say, as he ripped the uncaring mask off of this man's face and taught him fear and horror and _pain. _(His genin team would never vouch for him but Kakashi knew that he was a good teacher in some respects).The ninja world has no use for the weak. Kakashi lost. Kakashi died. There is no respect for the weak.

A nail flew through the air.

This is how Kakashi died:

(_Oh god I don't want to die I wish things could have been different I would have changed everything._

_I don't want to die_).

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The Sandaime was at a disadvantage. He was fast, yes, but he had no idea where he was going. He was stuck chasing the gossamer threads of chakra that Minato's Hiraishin left behind.

On the other hand, it only took Kakashi a minute of orientation after spotting the Hokage's monument in the rapidly clearing air to find his direction.

He sped past a group of older shinobi restraining a group of younger ones. He had been part of that group, once, he remembered, until Yuuhi Kenichi had turned away to lecture his daughter and he had managed to slink away into the shadows and towards his duty on the battlefield.

He had been too late, once.

Kakashi knew exactly where he was going, and did not bother to disguise himself as he blew past the Sandaime, trusting the man to have more pressing matters on his mind than a nonthreatening ally.

His wife was with Kushina, after all.

(_Was she dead yet?_ _Was _he_ dead yet?_)

Sandaime was headed in the wrong direction.

Kakashi would have told him, but—

_"Unlocking the white chakra at such a young age is certainly an accomplishment," the Sandaime said. "But I have no time for games, Kakashi."_

—He had to be fast; he had to make it before Minato would put up a barrier to protect the village, and in doing so doom himself. He had already dragged the fox out of Konoha, was it too much to ask for a little trust?

Yes it was. That was the Hokage's duty, after all. To protect his people. (_But Minato had left them and how could he protect them when he was gonegonegone and nothing left but a bloodied legacy with blonde hair and blue eyes and a painfully familiar smile. Kakashi hated Uzumaki Naruto_).

There, up ahead! A branch of chakra arced around him like a whip and Kakashi threw himself forward just as a barrier snapped together behind him. Kushina's work.

He had made it.

The earth before him suddenly shook, and Kakashi realized with horror that it was not ground but fox itself, straining against the chains that bound it.

The fox screamed in frustration, a feral, primal noise. Kakashi screamed in horror, terror and pure _unalderated _fear.

_the chakra the chakra it was burning burning burning daddy are you what is that your stomach the chakra chakra sensei please wake up burning through his skin and his skull and his eye was burning red red blood obito why would you why for me and the chakra was the chakra was burningburningburning—_

A baby screamed in confusion.

Kakashi jerked back to his feet from where he had fallen. He would not fail, not when he was so close. They had to be here somewhere.

"…drag the nine-tails…back…and die with it inside me…that'll…prevent it from coming back…for a while…"

That was Kushina.

Long chains encircled her, tight with pressure as the fox pushed against them with all his might, but she held firm, trembling only slightly. Minato knelt before her, baby cradled in his arms as he stared at her in horror. Both were far too absorbed in each other to notice him, and Kakashi felt as though he was intruding on something far too private to be seen. (_But sensei was _his _first, damnit_).

It was only then that Kakashi realized that he had changed something; changed everything. It was perfect, because somehow he had succeeded, though he had done nothing at all. Did that mean that somehow his actions had killed his sensei the first time, as his inaction was saving him now? He wondered. He did not think so; he had not been within the barrier the first time after all.

"It's the only way to save you both…with the little bit of chakra I have left," she said. "Thank you…for everything."

_Thank you_, Kakashi thought. His desperation-born strength was already sapping out of him, and he stumbled backwards slightly to half-collapse into a tree. _Thank you thankyouthankyou._

"Kushina…"

Minato sounded so weak that it was physically painful. Could he really not see it was a good thing? He would live. He would live! It was _perfect. _

"You…" Minato started, only to stop immediately, words choking in his throat. Deep breath. "You made me your husband…you made me into the Yondaime…you made me this boy's father! And I…"

"Don't look so sad, Minato," Kushina said.

Kakashi listened to her monologue with all the grace he could muster; Minato had loved her, she was worth something. She deserved to have some last words with him (_she didn't deserve _his _last words, though, and Kakashi hated himself so much for giving them to her. Her ever more for taking them_).

"I'm…I'm happy. Happy that you loved me. Happy that it's…our son's…birthday," her speech was faltering now, blood and tears catching in her throat. "Like…if I try to imagine surviving, and the three of us…living together…I can't think of anything…beyond 'I'd be so happy.'

"If I had any regrets…" she continued. Sensei was crying. "It would be that I won't see Naruto grow up. But—"

There was a silence.

Then, softly.

"Kushina…you don't need to take the fox down with you," gaining momentum, now. Minato was impassioned and _this was dangerous territory. _Kakashi was back on his feet again with a jolt, ignoring the crimson trail left behind on the tree to mark his presence. "We can use our last bit of chakra to see Naruto one more time!"

"…huh?" She said. This was not happening. This _was not _happening.

"I'll seal the last of your chakra in Naruto with an eight trigrams seal. Then I'll lead the nine-tails away with a seal only a non-jinchuuriki like me can use—"

_No!_

.

.

.

Kakashi had never been particularly lucky. He was no eternally cursed Tsunade, but one does not gain the record of longest lasting sanity in ANBU by pure luck (_sanity was always relative and Kakashi was a good liar, but that is another story altogether)_ and he had learned to rely on nothing and no one but his own skill.

It was for this reason that as Kakashi abandoned all logical and rational thought and threw himself forward, he was desperately begging for luck from an almighty ineffable being above, but not really expecting to succeed.

He might have considered it a stroke of luck when he did.

It should be noted that if he were truly lucky he would not have.

.

.

.

"—The Dead Demon Seal!"

"But that…the user will be-!"

Somewhere, Minato would interrupt her. He would detail his plan, and emphasize its benefits, and then he and his wife would give their son a heartfelt goodbye before he would turn with a death god on his back to face death personified in exchange for his eternity.

Elsewhere, neither Minato nor Kushina were ninja, and Konoha was the name of a street in Tokyo.

Here, the world cleared and Kakashi knew what he had to do. His surroundings faded away to a dimmed blur and his vision focused.

There was a light at the end of the tunnel. Wrapped in a light blanket and already shining with what would become a head of golden hair, a baby was crying. This was Namikaze Naruto.

There was an old man trapped in a boy's body, burning and bleeding and already dead. His hair was white as death but it had always been, and the blood that stained it was not an irregularity. This was Hatake Kakashi.

There was a knife clenched in his right arm.

This was a story's divergence.

And then he was flying forward.

.

.

.

Namikaze Minato was the kind of prodigy that came once in a blue moon. There was the more common type of genius that generally tended to appear once or twice a generation in each major village: the child that blew through the ranks to be a jounin at twelve, or managed to teach himself his family's most difficult secret technique without a hint of aid while only a genin, or an academy student that could slaughter his entire graduating class in the playground.

These were shinobi with pages in the bingo book, hefty bounties, and fame to their names.

Then there were shinobi like Namikaze Minato. Or, to be more accurate: then there was Namikaze Minato. He did not have a page in the bingo book; he had a book to himself. There was no analysis of his techniques and his strengths and weaknesses, just a warning to flee on sight (but you were already dead by then so it was rather pointless). His mere presence could turn the tides of a battle, and his influence was the deciding factor in the Third Great Ninja World War.

Some called him a god. Most called him a devil. But in the end, he was only a man.

Consider the following:

Yesterday, you were about to become a father. You were the leader of your village, loved by its people, and had a beautiful wife, two darling students, and a world finally at peace.

Today your wife is dying in front of you, and nothing you can do will stop it. Your newborn son is cradled in your arms and you know that in order to save your village you are going to have to curse him to a life of torment.

In all likelihood, you would not have much of an awareness of your immediate surroundings.

Minato was confident in the impenetrable nature of his barrier, and far too focused on his wife (_because she was going to be gone and so was he, so look at this baby in his arms because he would never have another chance to_) to notice any hidden danger.

Given the circumstances, it was probably excusable.

He would never forgive himself.

.

.

.

Minato needed the child in order to sacrifice himself.

Kakashi needed Minato to live.

There was no chirping birds, no spinning eyes, no taunting mockery and no exchange of blows. There was only steel on flesh, the hiss of skin breaking and a child dying, then nothing. This was no mission; nothing that could be excused by a duty, an order or a job. It was murder (and it had never felt so good).

Kakashi's blade sliced through Naruto's soft belly like a knife through butter.

History tilted three-hundred-and-sixty degrees on its axis.

**R&R. Cheers~**


End file.
